Transcript: Q&A with Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia) on the leaked NSA surveillance programs before the House Intelligence Committee on June 18, 2013

Partial transcript of Q&A with Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia) on the NSA leaks & Edward Snowden before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on June 18, 2013:

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia):
…My constituents ask me the difference in maybe what the Attorney General did in going to the court on the Rosen case saying that he was an un-indicted co-conspirator because that was actually about a leak also. What type of process or internal review did you all go over before you asked for those phones to be tapped? And to make it perfectly clear, that was not in a FISA court, is that correct?

James Cole, Deputy Attorney General:
Number one, that was not a FISA court. In the Rosen case, there were no phones being tapped. It was just to acquire a couple of e-mails. And there is a very, very robust system – it’s set out in regulations that the Department of Justice follows of the kinds of scrubbing and review that must be done before any subpoena like that can be issued. You have to ensure that you’ve exhausted all other reasonable avenues of investigation, that that’s done before you even get to the decision about whether or not such a processed should be used. You have to make sure that the information you’re looking at is very, very tailored and only necessary – truly necessary to be able to move the investigation forward in a significant way. There are restrictions on what can be done with the information and it goes through a very long process of review from the U.S. Attorney’s office through the United States Attorney him or herself into the usually criminal division of the Justice Department, through the Assistant Attorney General of the criminal division, through the Deputy Attorney General’s office, and up ultimately to the Attorney General signing it. It gets a lot of review before that’s done under the criteria that we have in our guidelines and our CFR.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia):
…So then because of the security leak, the DOJ didn’t contact the FBI or the NSA or there was no coordination with that? It was strictly a DOJ criminal investigation?

James Cole, Deputy Attorney General:
Well, the FBI does criminal investigations with the Department of Justice and they were contacted in that regard. But it was not part of the FISA process. It did not involve the NSA.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia):
And I think that’s what we need to be clear of. It was absolutely not part of the FISA process and that is a lot more detailed and a lot more scrutinized as far as getting information than what this was, is that correct?

James Cole, Deputy Attorney General:
Well, they’re both very detailed and very scrutinized processes. They have different aspects to them but they’re both very unusually, frankly, detailed and scrutinized – both of those processes.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia):
…General, going back to what Ms. Sewell had asked about the different clearance that you would have with a contractor or a government employee, when you have a thousand different contractors, I mean, I know from my experience on having had one of my staff go through a security clearance, it’s a pretty detailed operation and I know that this gentleman had previously, I believe – heard that he had worked for the CIA. Had there been any further clearance given to this individual when he became a contractor after he left the employ of the CIA?

General Keith Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency:
No additional clearance. He had what’s needed to work at NSA or one of our facilities – a top secret special intelligence clearance. And that goes through a series of processes and reviews. The Director of National Intelligence is looking at those processes to make sure those are all correct…We support that objective.

But to work at NSA, whether you’re a contract, a government, a civilian, or a military, you have to have that same level of clearance.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia):
Does it bother you that this gentleman had only been there for a short period of time or is there any oversight or review or whatever of the individuals that are carrying out this work? Is there any type of probation time or anything? Because it seems he was there a very short period of time.

General Keith Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency:
So he had worked in a couple of positions. He had just moved into the Booz Allen position in March but he had worked in a information technology position for the 12 months preceding that at NSA Hawaii. So he had actually been there 15 months. He moved from one contract to another.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Georgia):
So would he have been familiar with these programs at his previous job?

General Keith Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency:
Yes, and I believe that’s where going out on what we called the public classified web servers – they help you understand parts of NSA that he gained some of the information and took some of that. I can’t go into more detail.

Robert Litt, General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence General Counsel:
…Just one point there, when you say would he have become familiar with these programs, I think part of the problem that we’re having these days that he’s not nearly as familiar with these programs as he’s portrayed himself to be, and this is what happens when somebody who sees a tiny corner of things think that it gives them insight and visibility into the whole program.